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Now that the battle-broken - and distinctly crooked - bones found under a Leicester council car park have been definitively identified as those of Richard III, it seems certain that interest in our most murderous (according to his critics) or most maligned (say his supporters) monarch will reach new peaks.

And historians have been quick to meet the need for more knowledge about England’s last Plantagenet king. At least three tours - one, to declare an interest, led by me - have been organised this year to follow the tortuous trail that led little Richard - he stood all of 5’ 8 and his scoliosis-twisted spine would have made him seem even smaller - from his Yorkshire upbringing, via the London coup that won him the throne, to his final nemesis in the bloodstained Midlands bog of Bosworth Field.

For a king who reigned for just two years and two months, there is, surprisingly, still a lot left of Richard for history-hungry tourists to see.

In Yorkshire, where he spent his childhood under the watchful eye of his guardian, Earl Warwick ‘the Kingmaker’, there is the magnificent ruin of his great castle of Middleham set amidst the stunning scenery of the Dales, and the gaunter remains of another castle - Sheriff Hutton - where later he held his councils as Viceroy of the North for his 6’ 4” giant of a brother, King Edward IV, in whose mighty shadow he had grown.

York itself, the city that mourned what it called the ‘piteous murder’ of its favourite son at Bosworth, has its ancient gateway of Micklegate Bar (above), where the grinning severed heads of Richard’s father, brother and uncle, each adorned with paper crowns mocking the House of York’s dynastic claims, were displayed after their slaughter by the rival Lancastrians at the battle of Wakefield.

Edward IV took a fearful revenge for Wakefield, when he cemented the House of York’s claim to the throne in blood at Towton (below), a windswept plateau south of York and the scene of England’s most murderous battle, when perhaps 40,000 died in a day-long slaughter fought out in driving snow on Palm Sunday 1461.

Growing up in the fratricidal Wars of the Roses, Richard cannot be said to have had a secure or happy childhood, and a modern lawyer, seeking mitigation for his alleged crimes, would have pleaded the psychological disturbance caused by the massacre of almost his entire family in the wars as excuse enough for his own slaughter - if such it was - of his brother Edward’s two sons, the ‘Princes in the Tower’.

For it is to the Tower of London (below), England’s oldest and grimmest inhabited fortress, where Richard’s trail of blood leads next. If Richard did indeed, as most historians now accept, order the killing of young Edward V and his brother, another Richard, it would not have been the first crime he had committed there.

For contemporary chroniclers also accuse him of personally carrying out the murder of the saintly, gentle and mentally fragile Lancastrian king, Henry VI, as he knelt in prayer in the Tower of London’s Wakefield tower a decade before the disappearance of the Princes. And as he completed the coup that brought him the crown, Richard also ordered the execution of his brother’s bosom friend, Lord William Hastings, who was dragged from the Tower’s council chamber to a builder’s block to have his head hacked off as Richard sat down to lunch.

Another London landmark, Chelsea’s Crosby Hall, miraculously preserved in Cheyne Walk, is the medieval merchant’s house, where, according to Shakespeare, Richard completed the coup that brought him the throne.

And so the trail winds down to Bosworth (below), the Leicestershire battlefield where, in August 1485 Richard’s short and troubled life (he was just 32 when he died) ended in the muck and ruck of another medieval battle. Surrounded by a baying pack of his enemies, hacked - so modern forensic examination of his skeleton tells us - by poleaxe, sword and dagger, Richard died, fighting savagely to the last.

Multiple murderer and child killer he may have been - brave man he certainly was.

Nigel Jones is author of ‘Tower: an epic history of the Tower of London’ (Windmill).

Richard III tours

Telegraph Travel offers the Richard III and the War of the Roses tour, operated by Travel Editions, from £299pp for three days. Offer includes return two nights accommodation with various meals, visits to sites, guided tours with Julian Humphrys and coach transfers. Call 08448730323 or visitwww.telegraph.co.uk/richardiii

‘Winter of Discontent: Richard III and the Wars of the Roses’ is a three-day tour of Ricardian castles, battlefields and museums in Yorkshire, the Midlands and London led by Nigel Jones around the anniversary of the king’s death from August 20-23. It costs £595 per person (0207 993 6540; historicaltrips.com)

Historian Alison Weir leads an extensive eight-day tour ‘Lancaster and York’ telling the story of the Wars of the Roses which runs from May 16-May 23 from £2,795 per person (alisonweirtours.com).